User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 86 me what you are thinking as you are grouping the cards. If you go quiet, I will prompt you for feedback.” Whenever participants make a change to a card, we strongly encourage them to tell us about it. It helps us to understand why they are making the change. In a group session, it offers us the opportunity to discuss the change with the group. We typically ask questions like John just made a good point. He refers to a “travel reservation” as a “travel booking.” Does anyone else call it that? or Jane noticed that “couples-only resorts” is missing. Does anyone else book “couples-only resorts?” If anyone nods in agreement, we ask him/her to discuss the issue. We then ask all the participants who agree to make the same change to their card(s). Par- ticipants may not think to make a change until it is brought to their attention, otherwise they may believe they are the only ones who feel a certain way and do not want to be “different.” Encouraging the discussion helps us to decide whether an issue is pervasive or limited to only one individual. Participants typically make terminology and defi nition changes while they are reviewing the cards. They may also notice objects that do not belong and remove them during the review process. Most often, adding missing cards and deleting cards that do not belong are not done until the sorting stage – as participants begin to organize the information. Labeling Groups Once the sorting is complete, the participants need to name each of the groups. Give the fol- lowing instructions: Now I would like for you to name each of your groups. How would you describe the cards in each of these piles? You can use a single word, phrase, or sentence. Please write the name of each group on one of the blank cards and place it on top of the group. Once you have fi nished, please staple each group together, or if it is too large to staple, use a rubber band. Finally, place all of your bound groups in the envelope provided. DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION There are several ways to analyze the plethora of data you will collect in a card sort exercise. We describe here how to analyze the data via pro- grams designed specifically for card sort analysis as well as with statistical TIP We prefer to staple the groups together because we do not want cards falling out. If your cards get mixed with others, your data will be ruined; so make sure your groups are secured and that each participant’s groups remain separate! We mark each envelope with the participant’s number and seal it until it is time to analyze the data. This prevents cards from being confused between participants. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Card Sorting CHAPTER 3 87 packages (e.g., SPSS, SAS, STATISTICA ™ ) and spreadsheets. We also show how to analyze data that computer programs cannot handle. Finally, we walk you through an example to demonstrate how to interpret the results of your study. When testing a small number of participants (four or less) and a limited num- ber of cards, some evaluators simply “eyeball” the card groupings. This is not precise and can quickly become unmanageable when the number of partici- pants increases. Cluster analysis allows you to quantify the data by calculat- ing the strength of the perceived relationships between pairs of cards, based on the frequency with which members of each possible pair appear together. In other words, how frequently did participants pair two cards together in the same group? The results are usually presented in a tree diagram or dendrogram (see Figs 3.4 and 3.5 for two examples). This presents the distance between pairs of objects, with 0.00 being closest and 1.00 being the maximum distance. A distance of 1.00 means that none of the participants paired the two particu- lar cards together; whereas 0.00 means that every participant paired those two cards together. FIGURE 3.4 Dendrogram for our travel Web site using EZCalc. Books Links to travel gear sites Luggage Travel games Family friendly travel information Currency Languages Tipping information Featured destinations Travel alerts Travel deals Weekly travel polls Chat with travel agents Chat with travelers Post and read questions on bulletin boards Rate destinations Read reviews (Average) 0.50 1.00 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 88 Create a new message Send current message Attach file to a message Spell-check current message Reply to a message Forward a message Print a message Get new messages View next message Delete a message Save message to a file Append message to a file Create a new folder Delete an existing folder Rename an existing folder View another folder Overview of folders Delete the trash folder Move message between folders Copy message between folders Overview of messages in folder 0 2000 Complete linkageSingle linkage 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 18000 20000 22000 24000 26000 28000 FIGURE 3.5 Tree diagram of WebCAT data analysis for an e-mail system. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF HOW PROGRAMS CLUSTER ITEMS Cluster analysis can be complex, but we can describe it only briefl y here. To learn more about it, refer to Aldenderfer and Blashfi eld (1984), Lewis (1991), or Romesburg (1984). The actual math behind cluster analysis can vary a bit, but the technique used in most computer programs is called the “amalgamation” method. Clustering begins with every item being its own single-item cluster. Let’s continue with our travel example. Below are eight items from a card sort: Participants sort the items into groups. Then every item’s difference score with every other item is computed (i.e., considered pair-by-pair). Those with the closest (smallest) difference scores are then joined. The more participants who paired two items together, Hotel reservation Airplane ticket Rental auto Rental drop-off point Frequent-guest credit Frequent-fl yer miles Rental pick-up point Featured destinations Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Card Sorting CHAPTER 3 89 the shorter the distance. However, not all the items are necessarily paired at this step. It is entirely possible (and in fact most probable) that some or many items will not be joined with anything until a later “round” or more than two items may be joined. So after Round 1, you may have the following: Hotel reservation and frequent-guest credit ■ Airplane ticket and frequent-fl yer miles ■ Rental auto, pick-up point, and drop-off point ■ Featured destinations ■ Now that you have several groups comprised of items, the question is “How do you con- tinue to join clusters?” There are several different amalgamation (or linkage) rules available to decide how groups should next be clustered, and some programs allow you to choose the rule used. Below is a description of three common rules. Single Linkage If any members of the groups are very similar (i.e., small distance score because many participants have sorted them together), the groups will be joined. So if “frequent-guest credit” and “frequent-fl yer miles” are extremely similar, it does not matter how different “hotel reservation” is from “airplane ticket” (see Round 1 groupings above); they will be grouped in Round 2. This method is commonly called the “nearest neighbor” method, because it takes only two near neighbors to join both groups. Single linkage is useful for producing long strings of loosely related clusters. It focuses on the similarities among groups. Complete Linkage This is effectively the opposite of single linkage. Complete linkage considers the most dissimilar pair of items when determining whether to join groups. Therefore, it doesn’t mat- ter how extremely similar “frequent-guest credit” and “frequent-fl yer miles” are; if “hotel reservation” and “airplane ticket” are extremely dissimilar (because few participants sorted them together), they will not be joined into the same cluster at this stage (see “Round 1” groupings above). Not surprisingly, this method is commonly called the “furthest neighbor” method, because the joining rule considers the difference score of the most dissimilar (i.e., largest difference) pairs. Complete linkage is useful for producing very tightly related groups. Average Linkage This method attempts to balance the two methods above by taking the average of the difference scores for all the pairs when deciding whether groups should be joined. So the difference in score between “frequent-guest credit” and “frequent-fl yer miles” may be low (very similar), and the difference score of “hotel reservation” and “airplane ticket” may be high but, when averaged, the overall difference score will be somewhere in the middle (see Round 1 groupings above). Now the program will look at the averaged score to decide whether “hotel reservation” and “frequent-guest credit” should be joined with “airplane ticket” and “frequent-fl yer miles” or whether the fi rst group is closer to the third group, “rental auto” and “rental pick-up point.” Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 90 SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR ADDITIONAL READING If you would like to learn more about cluster analysis, you can refer to: Aldenderfer, M. S. & Blashfi eld, R. K. (1984). ■ Cluster analysis. Sage University paper series on quantitative applications in the social sciences, No. 07-044. Beverly Hills, (CA): Sage Publications. Lewis, S. (1991). Cluster analysis as a technique to guide interface design. ■ Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 10 , 267–280. Romesburg, C. H. (1984). ■ Cluster analysis for researchers. Belmont, (CA): Lifetime Learning Publications (Wadsworth). You can analyze the data from a card sort with a software program specifi cally designed for card sorting or with any standard statistics package. We will describe each of the programs available and why you would use it. Analysis with a Card Sorting Program At the time of publication, there are at least four programs available on ■ the Web that are designed specifi cally for analyzing card sort data: NIST’s WebCAT® ( http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebCAT/overview.html ) WebSort ( http://www.websort.net/ ) ■ CardZort/CardCluster ( http://condor.depaul.edu/~jtoro/cardzort/ ■ cardzort.htm ) XSort ( http://www.xsortapp.com/ ) ■ UserZoom ( http://www.userzoom.com/online-card-sorting-study ) ■ OptimalSort ( http://www.optimalsort.com ) ■ Data analysis using these tools has been found to be quicker and easier than using manual methods (Zavod, Rickert & Brown, 2002). Analysis with a Statistics Package Statistical packages like SAS, SPSS, and STATISTICA are not as easy to use as specialized card sort programs when analyzing card sort data; but when you have over 100 cards in a sort, some packages cannot be used. A program like SPSS is necessary, but any package that has cluster analysis capabilities will do. Analysis with a Spreadsheet Package Most card sort programs have a maximum number of cards that they can support. If you have a very large set of cards, a spreadsheet (e.g., Microsoft Excel) can be used for analysis. The discussion of how to accomplish this is complex and beyond the scope of this book. You can fi nd an excellent, step-by-step description of analyzing the data with a spreadsheet tool at http://www. boxesandarrows.com/view/analyzing_card_sort_results_with_a_ spreadsheet_ template . Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Card Sorting CHAPTER 3 91 Data That Computer Programs Cannot Handle Computer programs can be great, but they often do not do all the analysis for you. Below are some of the issues that we have encountered when using differ- ent electronic programs. Although the data analysis for these elements is a little awkward, we think the value that the data bring makes them worth collecting. ADDING OR RENAMING OBJECTS One of the basic requirements of cluster analysis is that all participants must have the exact set of cards in terms of name and number. If participants renamed any of the objects or if they added any cards, you will not be able to add this information into the program. You will need to record this information for each participant on a sheet of paper and analyze it separately. The number of cards added or changed tends to be very small but it is an extra step to take. Returning to our earlier example, you notice that Participant 1 added the object “airport code.” Write this down and then tally the number of other participants who did the same thing. At the end, you will likely have a small list of added and renamed objects, along with the number of participants who made those changes. Based on the number of participants who added it, you can assess its importance. GROUP NAMES The group names that participants provide are not presented in the analysis. You will need to record the pile names that participants suggested and do your best to match them to the results. We typically write down the names of each group for each participant and look for similarities at the end. How many participants created an “Airline Travel” group? How many created a “Hotel” group? When examining the dendrogram, you will notice clusters of objects. See if there is a match between those clusters and the names of the groups that participants created. DUPLICATE OBJECTS As we discussed earlier, sometimes participants ask to place an item in multiple locations. Because the computer programs available do not allow you to enter the same card more than once and you must have the same number of cards for each participant, include the original card in the group the participant placed it. The duplicate cards placed in the secondary groups will have to be examined and noted manually. DELETED OBJECTS EZCalc is the only program we are aware of that can handle discards automati- cally, but IBM has pulled EZCalc off its main site. The only location for down- loading EZCalc is http://www.tripledogs.com/ibm-usability/ . Many computer programs cannot deal with deleted cards. For these programs, if you have allowed participants to create a discard or miscellaneous pile of cards that they do not believe belong in the sort, there is a workaround you need to do. You cannot enter this collection of discarded cards as a group into a computer program since Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 92 the cluster analysis would treat these cards as a group of objects that participants believe are related. In reality, these cards are not related to any of the other cards. Place each rejected card in a group by itself to demonstrate that it is not related to any other card in the cluster analysis. For example, if participants placed “Frequent-Flyer Miles,” “Companions,” and “Meal Requests” in the discard pile, you should enter “Frequent-Flyer Miles” in one group, “Companions” in a sec- ond group, and “Meal Requests” in a third group. Interpreting the Results You now have a collection of rich data. The dendrogram displays groups of objects that the majority of participants believe belong together. Changes that participants make to cards can make interpretation of the results tricky. When a deleted object is repeatedly placed in a group by itself (or left out, in the case of EZCalc) , you may see it on a branch by itself or loosely attached to a group that it really doesn’t belong with. Additionally, if participants place an object in multiple groups, they may not have agreed on the “best” location to place it. Consequently, you may fi nd the object is living on a branch by itself or loosely attached to a group that it really doesn’t belong with. You must use your knowledge of the domain or product to make adjustments when ambigu- ity exists. Use the additional data you collected like new objects, group names, changed terminology, and think-aloud data to help interpret the data. Let’s walk through our travel example and interpret the results of our dendrogram shown earlier in Fig. 3.4 . Using our domain knowledge and the group labels participants provided in the card sort, we have named each of the clusters in the dendrogram (see Fig. 3.6 ). We appear to have four clear groups: “Products,” “Resources,” “News,” and “Opinions.” It is important to note that the card sort methodology will not provide you with information about the type of architecture you should use (e.g., tabs, menus). This decision must be made by a design professional. Instead, the tree diagram demonstrates how participants expect to fi nd information grouped. In the case of a Web-based application with tabs, the tree may present the recommended name of the tab and the elements that should be contained within that particu- lar tab. Now, you should examine the list of changes that participants made (e.g., renamed cards, additional cards) to discover whether there is high agreement among participants. What objects did participants feel you were missing? ■ What objects did participants feel did not belong? ■ What are all the terminology changes participants made? ■ What defi nitions did participants change? ■ What items did users want in multiple locations? ■ Use this information to determine whether your product needs to add or remove information or tasks to be useful to participants. You may recommend Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Card Sorting CHAPTER 3 93 to the team that they conduct a competitive analysis (if they haven’t already) to discover whether other products support such functionality. Similarly, use the information about deleted objects to recommend the team to examine whether specifi c information or tasks are unnecessary. Terminology can be specifi c to a company, area of the country, or individual. With each terminology change, you will need to investigate whether it is a “standard” – and therefore needs to be incorporated – or whether there are several different possible terms. When several terms exist, you will want to use the most common term but allow your product to be customized so that it is clear to all your users. Finally, examine the defi nition changes. Were the changes minor – simply an issue of clarifi cation? If so, there isn’t anything to change in your product. If, how- ever, there were many changes, you have an issue. This may mean that the prod- uct development team does not have a good grasp of the domain or that there is disagreement within the team about what certain features of the product do. COMMUNICATE THE FINDINGS Preparing to Communicate Your Findings The specifi c data that you communicate to product teams can vary depending upon the activity you conducted, but some elements of how you communicate the results are the same regardless of the method. FIGURE 3.6 Dendrogram of a travel Web site card sort with group names added. Books Links to travel gear sites Luggage Travel games Family friendly travel information Currency Languages Tipping information Featured destinations Travel alerts Travel deals Weekly travel polls Chat with travel agents Chat with travelers Post and read questions on bulletin boards Rate destinations Read reviews (Average) 0.50 1.00 Products Resources News Opinions Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 94 When we present the results of a card sort analysis to executives or teams, we present the actual dendrogram generated by the applica- tion (as in Fig. 3.6 ) and a simple table to review (see Fig. 3.7 ). We also present a table of changes that participants made to the cards (added objects, deleted objects, terminology changes, and defi nition changes) and any sketches the designers may have produced to illustrate the recommendations. As with all the other user requirement methodolo- gies, the card sort is a valuable addition to your software requirement documentation. These results can be incorporated into documentation such as the Detailed Design Document. Ideally, additional user requirement techniques should be used along the way to capture new require- ments and verify your current requirements. MODIFICATIONS Below are a few modifi cations on the card sorting technique we have presented. You can limit the number of groups users can create, use computerized tools for the sort instead of physical cards, provide the groups for users to place the cards in, ask users to describe the items they would fi nd in a particular category, or physically place groups that are related closer to each other. Limit the Number of Groups You may need to limit the number of groups a participant can create. For exam- ple, if you are designing a Web site and your company has a standard of no more than seven tabs, you can ask participants to create seven or fewer groups. Alternatively, you can initially allow participants to group the cards as they see fi t; then, if they create more than seven groups, ask them to regroup their cards into higher-level groups. In the second case, you should staple all the lower-level groups together and then bind the higher-level groups together with a rubber band. This will allow you to see and analyze both levels of groupings. Electronic Card Sorting There are tools available that allow users to sort the cards electronically rather than using physical cards (e.g., OptimalSort, WebSort, xSort, and CardZort). Elec- tronic card sorting can save you time during the data analysis phase because the sorts are automatically saved in the computer. Another advantage is that, depending on the number of cards, users can see all the cards available for sort- ing at the same time. Unless you have a very large work surface for users to spread their physical cards on, this is not possible for manual card sorts. Elec- tronic sorting has the disadvantage that, if you run a group session, you will FIGURE 3.7 Travel card sort table of recommendations. Tab name Resources Languages Currency Family friendly travel information News Travel alerts Featured destinations Weekly travel polls Opinions Post and read questions on bulletin boards Chat with travel agents Rate destinations Products Luggage Books Links to travel gear sites Objects to be located within the tab Tipping information Travel deals Read reviews Travel games Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Card Sorting CHAPTER 3 95 need a separate computer for each participant. This means money and potential technical issues. In addition, you need to provide a brief training session to explain how to use the software. Even with training, the user interface may be diffi cult for users to get the hang of. Some tools support remote testing, which allows you to gather data from users anywhere. However, users may have a more diffi cult time without a facilitator in the room to answer questions. Unfortunately, none of the computer-based programs provides a defi nition with the objects. Also, they do not allow users to add, delete, or rename the objects. In our opinion, this is a serious shortcoming of the tools and the reason why we do not use them. SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR ADDITIONAL READING Prename the Groups You may already know the buckets that the objects being sorted must fi t into. Going back to our Web site example, if you cannot completely redesign your site, you may want to provide participants with the names of each tab, section, or page of your site. Provide participants with a “placemat” for each group. The placemat should state the name of the group and provide a clear description of it. Participants would then be tasked with determining what objects fi t into the predetermined groups. To go one step further, you may have the structure for your entire application already laid out and simply want to fi nd out whether you are correct. The article below provides a nice comparison of some of the automated card sorting tools available (at the time of publication) if electronic card sorting is of interest to you: Zavod, M. J., Rickert, D. E. & Brown, S. H. (2002). The automated card-sort as an ■ interface design tool: A comparison of products. In : Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society 46th annual meeting, Baltimore, MD, 30 September–4 October, pp. 646–650. EDITOR’S NOTE: CLOSED AND REVERSE CARD SORTING The last example where you provide users with the names of categories and then put items into those categories is called closed card sorting. Closed sorting is useful when you are verifying an existing hierarchy or structure (e.g., the main menu of an application or Web site) or adding new items to an existing structure. Closed sorting can be a follow-up to open sorting and be used to validate the categories that emerged from the open sorting. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. [...]... visible to all participants This is important for keeping the meeting focused Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark 115 116 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 4 Describe the brainstorming process to the group and explain the key principles and ground rules of your brainstorming session Write these principles and other ground rules on the. .. www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark 99 100 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design in another office The conference room table worked best; one participant especially liked the chair on wheels so he could roll up and down next to the table looking at his groupings Other participants sorted the cards standing up so they could reach along the table to work with the cards they had... Copyright © 2010 Elsevier, Inc All rights Reserved Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark 108 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 4 Discussing, critiquing, and possibly prioritizing the brainstorming results for subsequent action (this last step is often called the “convergent” phase where there is a winnowing of all the ideas into the. ..96 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design Reverse card sorting is similar to closed sorting In reverse card sorting, participants are asked to place cards that represent navigation items onto a diagram of a hierarchy (or other structure) and optionally, rate how certain they are that they are putting the card into the right place on the hierarchy The average... and listened to a lecture; the third group took a field trip to a toy store Each group then engaged in a brainstorming exercise According to Kelley, the group that actually went to the toy store generated more and better ideas than the other two groups If your brainstorming session dealt with how users could find a single item in a huge list, you could ask your participants to spend some time looking... decided to let them try the card sorting for themselves The danger, of course, was that they would remain in their own frame and not get beyond creating once again the site they knew Just a little prodding to “think about the users,” however, made these internal project team members realize for themselves both that they could put themselves into the users’ frame and that, once in that frame, they could... prioritize them later After the brainstorming session: a Designate a specific person or team to handle all the data after the session b Capture all the ideas and record which ideas will be considered further Catalog the ideas, preferably in a database so ideas that were not Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark 117 118 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the. .. illnesses they knew and (2) what illness was treated by which remedy From these two questions, he was able to compare response Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark 119 120 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design frequencies by gender, age, place of birth, and other factors The results of free listing can be used to rank order the words... the site, at that time, reflected the organization of the division and the research that it funds, the project team agreed that the mission of the Web site was to be the primary place that people come to for information on preventing cancer FIGURE 3.8 The Web site before card sorting Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark 97 98 User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide. .. time to time and doing a debrief interview as each person finished Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark Card Sorting CHAPTER 3 When the participants had sorted all the cards, we gave them the colored cards and asked them to name each of their groups We also asked them to place the groups on the table in the approximate configuration that they would expect to find the . PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 94 When we present the. purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. User Experience Re-Mastered: Your Guide to Getting the Right Design 100 in another offi